Sri Aurobindo

Collected Poems

CWSA.- Volume 2

Part Seven. Pondicherry, c. 1927 – 1947
Nonsense and “Surrealist” Verse

Surrealist Poem [1]

I heard the coockcouck jabbering on the lea

And saw the spokesman sprinting on the spud;

The airmale soared to heaven majestically

And dropped down with a strange miraculous thud.

I could not break the bosom of the blue;

I went for a walk and waltzed with woe awhile.

The cat surprised me with a single mew;

The porridge was magnificently vile.

These things are symbols if you understand,

But who can understand when poets resolve

To nothing mean. The beautiful beast is banned;

The problem grows too difficult to solve.

This work was not included in SABCL, it was not compared with other editions.

[The heart of the surrealist poet should be unfathomable. The problem is how to mean nothing, yet seem to mean anything or everything. His poetry should be at once about nothing at all and about all things in particular; nonsensically profound and irrationally beautiful. Unknown and extraordinary words are not indispensible in its texture but can have a place, if sparingly and mystically used. One who can do these things and others of a congenital character is a surrealist poet: Willy Whistler.]